Dumb Wizard Tricks

[Koumei]

It will be somewhat annoying to walk around in, but as a bonus it reveals invisible people.

An argument could also be made for "everyone has Partial Concealment all the time" however, depending on how close together these things are and what the MC feels like on that particular day. I mean if you're a Wizard that's probably a plus because you have things that ignore Concealment and while enemy Wizards also do, the same can't be said for the non-caster friends they bring along. I can't remember if Concealment of any grade makes you immune to Sneak Attack, or if it's just "if you have more Concealment than your attacker" or something. But that might work out in your favour too.

But now I have the image in my head of a particularly bored lich wandering around on the Ethereal plane building walls across the entire world just to tell ghosts and Magic Missile/Bigby Hand users to go fuck themselves.

[Zaranthan]

Once you get into chemistry and industrial processes and shit, the physical properties you can define like weight and volume and shit just don't have very much correlation with value or utility.

The easy way out is to simply assume that things have reasonable gold costs and describe your conjuration/transmutation limits in such terms. I recall a puff piece where somebody pontificated about dragons gaining their power not from merely living for centuries, but from spending centuries sleeping atop mountains of gold, because gold holds a bit more of the magic that was used to create the world than most substances. Just have a bit of that in your worldbuilding, and explain that THAT'S why gold prices are both weird and used as a universal unit of measure in and out of character.

I can't remember if Concealment of any grade makes you immune to Sneak Attack, or if it's just "if you have more Concealment than your attacker" or something. But that might work out in your favour too.

A rogue cannot sneak attack while striking a creature with concealment or striking the limbs of a creature whose vitals are beyond reach.

If you or your bodyguards don't rely on SA to murder things yourselves, this is definitely a win.

Also, I'm totally stealing that Fuck Bigby Lich for some window dressing in my campaign world. If nothing else, it's always nice to have some scenery in the Ethereal Plane. My players like to go there for some reason.

[Username17]

The easy way out is to simply assume that things have reasonable gold costs and describe your conjuration/transmutation limits in such terms.

If your conjuration is capable of summoning shitty paintings but not good paintings, your system is fundamentally retarded. That might be "game balanced," but it's just obviously retarded.

-Username17

[Zaranthan]

Well, there's nothing wrong with fabricate unless you're one of those people that thinks eschew materials lets you make masterwork daggers from thin air. Describing the gold piece limit by requiring a craft check to make fancy expensive shit is both balanced and non-retarded.

Once again, assuming your craft checks are balanced and not traps that drain your ability to do things on camera.

[Username17]

Well, there's nothing wrong with fabricate unless you're one of those people that thinks eschew materials lets you make masterwork daggers from thin air. Describing the gold piece limit by requiring a craft check to make fancy expensive shit is both balanced and non-retarded.

Once again, assuming your craft checks are balanced and not traps that drain your ability to do things on camera.

Fabricate does in fact allow you to make truly ridiculous amounts of wealth. That's just what it does. It changes an output of a craft check from GP per day to cubic feet per day. If you can find things that have a very high value per cubic foot, then you can make a ridiculous amount of wealth.

It just genuinely doesn't matter whether you think fabricate allows you to go all the way from iron ore to masterwork sword or if you think it only does "one pass" and substitutes for only a single craft check. The reality is that a cubic foot of steel is nearly a quarter ton of steel, so when you craft 10 of those worth of arms and armor with a single casting that is an absolutely off-the-charts amount of value added. Seriously, that's 147,000 gp worth of full plate with every casting, it's just not actually very important how much of that is net profit.

And that's just metal. The spell does 10 cubic feet of steel, but it does 100 cubic feet of silk. That's over four tons of fine clothing or fancy tapestries or whatever the fuck. That's over three hundred thousand GP worth of Kimono per casting.

So fucking go ahead. Come up with some sort of bullshit reading where you have to commit arbitrary gp value worth of inputs rather than just raw silk and dyes and then you get some chickensit percentage rather than the goods' actual value. You know what? It doesn't fucking matter. If your profit per casting is only 50k instead of 300k every time you use a 5th level spell slot, you still take the entire wealth by level system and shit in its bleeding eye sockets.

Now the actual text of the spell is reasonably explicit that we are going the full Popeye and you punch rocks and trees and get fully worked furniture and art objects. But it just doesn't fucking matter. The wealth creation rate is many orders of magnitude past what the WBL system can handle and bullshit objections that make it produce half as much profit or a third as much profit or half of a third as much profit do not stop that from being true.

-Username17

[maglag]

Now the actual text of the spell is reasonably explicit that we are going the full Popeye and you punch rocks and trees and get fully worked furniture and art objects.

Alas, the text of the spell doesn't actually say that.

What it says is:" You convert material of one sort into a product that is of the same material. "

"Product". Singular. Not "objects", plural.

So each cast gets you a single product, not mass-production. It's still profit, but you're only getting one luxury object per casting.[/b]

[Wiseman]

Product can be both singular and plural.

[K]

Product can be both singular and plural.

Grammar burn.

[phlapjackage]

Product can be both singular and plural.

Unless you want to torture the English language (It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is), AND assuming that maglag's quote above about the spell text is accurate, I think that in this case it's clear "product" is used in the singular. Otherwise a) the more common plural "products" would have been used, and b) the sentence structure really seems to indicate singular, eg "a product that is".

[Pariah Dog]

Product can be both singular and plural.

Unless you want to torture the English language (It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is), AND assuming that maglag's quote above about the spell text is accurate, I think that in this case it's clear "product" is used in the singular. Otherwise a) the more common plural "products" would have been used, and b) the sentence structure really seems to indicate singular, eg "a product that is".

Counter grammar burn?

[hyzmarca]

It's a moot point. Instead of producing a hundred silk bathrobes you produce one pre-scorred tear-apart sheet of silk bathrobes.

[DSMatticus]

Unless you want to torture the English language

Who doesn't? It deserves it.

[Ice9]

Teleport doesn't have a shunting clause

Huh, thought it inherited that from Dimension Door, but on closer inspection no.

Seems like the most plausible result would be making arrival "off target" (as per the result), or counting it as a false destination (under the "has been so completely altered" definition). So the designated arrival points probably won't come into play.


Re: Fabricate - if you're being technical, it requires a piece of the correct material (of any amount or worth), which gets turned into the items. And separately, materials (of any type) worth 1/3 the final price, which are consumed in the casting process. It's a rather poorly worded spell.

Even without any cost-cutting on the materials, it's money generation ability is pretty crazy. Use it with Craft (gemcutting) and triple your money with each casting. Subject only to how much uncut gems you can buy per day, which in a large city is a pretty huge amount, plus by the time you can cast Fabricate you may be able to Teleport.

Heck, for some items you can probably charge more for the Fabricated version. Custom-fitted Adamantine barding for a giant spider ready in a few minutes rather than several months? I think most adventurers would pay extra for that.

[LR]

It's a moot point. Instead of producing a hundred silk bathrobes you produce one pre-scorred tear-apart sheet of silk bathrobes.

You don't even have to do that. An object is any collection of matter that lacks a Cha or Wis score. So the definition of product is actually really loose. The three example uses of fabricate described in the PHB are 'trees to bridge', 'flax to clothes', and 'hemp to rope'. Now, it's a bridge made *only* of wood, so all the structural connections are going to be made using joints, rather than any kind of fastener. So, none of the wood going into that bridge is connected, it's just arranged in such a manner that the natural stress the bridge is under holds it together rather than tears it apart. It's one product in the same way that a Lego house is a single product.

It's the same way for the rope. The rope is just a series of threads twisted around each other such that the friction each individual thread creates holds the entire rope together. So a product can be 'planks and beams arranged as a bridge', threads wound into a rope', or 'clothes bound up in a bundle'. It's just how objects work.

[Username17]

Product can be both singular and plural.

Unless you want to torture the English language (It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is), AND assuming that maglag's quote above about the spell text is accurate, I think that in this case it's clear "product" is used in the singular. Otherwise a) the more common plural "products" would have been used, and b) the sentence structure really seems to indicate singular, eg "a product that is".

One of the examples in the actual book (as opposed to the cut down SRD) is "a wooden bridge from a clump of trees" and another example is "clothes from flax and wool." Which means that the spell explicitly lets you use plural inputs (clump of trees) and also explicitly lets you make plural outputs (clothes).

Any and every time someone tries to use a singular/plural argument about illusion or creation spells they are full of shit. So very much shit.

-Username17

[maglag]

The srd also includes sensible errata like several monsters that had Polymorph have it replaced by more sensible options like Change Shape.

Now if you consider that it is more shitty to read the most recently updated version of the spell in a reasonable manner than to base yourself in the old outdated version and end up with something unplayable, that's up to you, more options and fun for my table, less for yours.

[Koumei]

I wasted a minute or so of my life double-checking this, time that I could have spent lying under blankets and hissing at things using my arms and legs in a very human manner. That isn't a change by the SRD, that's a change that happened from 3.0 to 3.5 and if you look at the actual 3.5 Monster Manual you'll see that the Rakshasa etc. have "Change Shape" or "Alternate Form". The SRD had nothing to do with that, it just reflects whatever the core rules say.

[Username17]

Just so we're clear, maglag has gone from presenting a bad reading to presenting a reading in bad faith. Maglag is now perfectly aware that they are wrong, because the exact chapter and verse of why and how they are wrong has been cited.

Note also that items like "bundle of kimonos" or "cauldron full of healing salve" would be singular objects even if the singular/plural objection had any textual merit, which it does not. So it wouldn't even solve the monetary issue. Maglag is arguing in bad faith for a proposed solution to a problem their proposal would not solve.

The issue with fabricate and money is very complicated. Making things is in fact a means of producing large amounts of money. It's pretty much the basis of manufacturing capitalism, after all. The fabricate spell produces tremendous amounts of wealth and utterly shatters the wealth by level system. But so does wall of iron. Or plane shift. Or teleport. Or plant growth, for that matter. If a 9th level caster wants to break the wealth by level system, they can just do that.

The underlying issue is that wealth by level doesn't work as soon as characters have enough agency to step outside of the dungeon raiding treadmill. If you can take actions that create wealth rather than simply fight level appropriate monsters for DM assigned piles of gold, the entire wealth by level framework shatters. That's why K and I came up with the Wish Economy in the first place. Gold simply has to max out in how much level appropriate gear it can give you at about the point where players can convert downtime into excessively large amounts of gold. It has to do this, or whatever attempts you have to spot fix fabricate or whatever the fuck won't mean shit against the dozen other wealth generation tricks the players can use instead.

-Username17

[Thaluikhain]

Crashing the economy and wiping out industries is something wizards should do more often, instead of crossbreeding animals. Unless there was a crossbreeding animal industry they were undermining.

That makes me wonder, would dragons still horde gold if something can just magic it up? Is that a recipe for peace and harmony with greedy dragonkind, or will dragons horde something that can't be made that way?

[erik]

Scrooge McDuck style dragon hordes only make sense in a wish economy where their gold is copious beyond what a traditional gp economy could bear. So no special changes needed for wish economy. Tiny dragon hoards is one of the probs it helps with.

[RobbyPants]

Teleport doesn't have a shunting clause

Huh, thought it inherited that from Dimension Door, but on closer inspection no.

Seems like the most plausible result would be making arrival "off target" (as per the result), or counting it as a false destination (under the "has been so completely altered" definition). So the designated arrival points probably won't come into play.

So, is the "official" ruling for what happens if you teleport inside something "ask your DM"?

I really like the idea of the hanging beads trick, but I'm not seeing an official answer for what happens if you end up inside solid granite, let alone a single string of beads.

[Username17]

A literal reading of the beads trick is that it's extremely brutal. Since you can't materialize in the intended location, it's a "false destination." That's something that causes greater teleport to fail, but regular teleport causes you to roll a d20 until you roll a 1-12, taking a d10 damage for every time you roll a 13+. Assuming you don't die on the spot, you appear in a "similar location" somewhere within a thousand miles. So you appear in someone else's wizard tower, and there's a small but significant chance that you take lethal damage on the way.

You'd think that there would be some sort of universal teleport shunting rule, but there isn't. Dimension Door has its own arbitrary rule for teleporting into solid objects, and Teleport has entirely different rules for teleportation mishaps. Other teleport spells don't have any rules at all because there isn't always a clear inheritance tree. The only universal rule is that if you build an astral wall around your fort, all teleportation spells fail. But what happens when they fail is either specified in the spell as is the case with Dimension Door, Teleport, and Greater Teleport, or it's not and then you're just like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

-Username17

-Username17

[Koumei]

If you can take actions that create wealth rather than simply fight level appropriate monsters for DM assigned piles of gold, the entire wealth by level framework shatters.

Indeed, it basically falls apart if someone gets a job. People on the old WotC boards joked about how you could run a profit buying cauldrons, smashing them and selling them for scrap metal, or buying ladders, removing the rungs, then selling them for 2x 10' pole plus firewood. But what they described there, aside from "weird edge cases where some things cost less than their component parts", is a job. A very government-intervention "Dig a hole, fill it up" style job but a job nonetheless. That's just working and earning money that way, and if that breaks the game, the game needed fixing to begin with.

[phlapjackage]

Indeed, it basically falls apart if someone gets a job. People on the old WotC boards joked about how you could run a profit buying cauldrons, smashing them and selling them for scrap metal, or buying ladders, removing the rungs, then selling them for 2x 10' pole plus firewood. But what they described there, aside from "weird edge cases where some things cost less than their component parts", is a job. A very government-intervention "Dig a hole, fill it up" style job but a job nonetheless. That's just working and earning money that way, and if that breaks the game, the game needed fixing to begin with.

Shadowrun had/has similar problems. I remember lots of discussion about "why go on a run when we can do something like steal cars and make more money", and things like the survival knife that had some medicine/drug included that was worth more than the knife.

[Hicks]

whelp, foxwarrior and I found a dumb one for shadowrun 4e magicians. Mana Static makes a background count that reduces the force of any Spirits in it. Summon a spirit normally, but before you bind it cast Mana Static and get 1 less effect than the summoned spirit's force. use a service to get the spirit to stand in the mana static for a few hours. the spirit is reduced to force 1, and you spend 1 hour and 500nY to bind that sucker.

Since you're sustaining a spell, you roll [Magic]+[Binding]+[spirit specilization]-[2 sustaining a spell], and the spirit rolls 2 dice. no matter how badass the binding, you can only take 4 drain, and it will only take 1 hour.